Social Media: Marketing your business with YouTube

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You may have heard about the viral success of videos from Old Spice, Gillette, Blendtec and IKEA on YouTube, each with millions of views to date.  More and more, companies are looking to online video as a way to market their goods and services while also providing entertaining and informative content to consumers that stands apart form their competition.  Posting videos to YouTube is ideal for businesses large and small. The service is free and your videos can live online as long as you'd like, so a small initial investment to produce a video can result in long term returns.  An additional benefit to posting videos to YouTube - you don't have to worry about bandwidth issues on your own website - you can simply embed the code for your desired YouTube video and it will play on your website!

Some tips to making YouTube videos work for your business:

• Investing in expensive equipment to produce a video is simply not necessary - YouTube videos are just 320 x 400 pixels.  We recommend that you invest in a user-friendly video camera for under $500.
• Proper lighting while recording is important and doesn't have to be expensive.  (Read Bill Moyer's video lighting secrets for your home studio.)
• Choose a descriptive user name - this will become the name of your YouTube channel and you will not be able to change it.
• Be sure to include your website URL in your video.
• Videos must be under 10 minutes in length - but your video does not have to be that long!
• Give a good deal of thought to your choice of video name, your video description and the keywords you associate with your video, you want search engines to be able to find your video so chose keywords that best fit your business offerings and niche.
• Let your contacts know about your YouTube channel, notify them via email or on a social network such as Facebook or Twitter and be sure to post the URL on all your marketing materials and include the link in your email signature.
• Interact with other YouTube users - comment on relevant videos and subscribe to other channels in order to drive some traffic to your channel.

For more tips on making your YouTube videos a success, check out Social Media Examiner's 16 Tips for Successful Online Video Marketing.

Let us know if you are using online video to market your business, leave us a comment below with the URL for your videos.
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See for yourself why the videos from Old Spice, Gillette, Blendtec and IKEA went viral!

Old Spice


Gillette


Blendtec


IKEA

Social Media: Twitter and "tweeting"

Tweet Twitter is a free micro-blogging service where users post notes or "tweets" in 140 characters or less. If you are new to Twitter or curious about how you can use it to share information and opinions with others or to market your business, take a look at Twitter 101: How should I get started using Twitter? to learn how to set-up an account, "tweet" and "re-tweet" and discover others users to "follow." [See our blog about shortening URL's, this is a great way to help you stay within Twitter's 140 character limit]

As mentioned in our post about using social media for business, many business have had success using Twitter to generate business, check out Twitter's case studies to learn how companies, large and small, are engaging with customers, gaining invaluable word-of-mouth advertising and growing their businesses using this service.

Follow NMC on Twitter, @nmc2004

For lists of celebrities, musicians, news outlets and other interesting Twitter users to follow, check out wefollow.com
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Check out Twitter's YouTube video: "Twitter: discover what's new in your world"

Social Media: Hongkiat.com's 20 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know

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Check out Hongkiat.com's Facebook tips and tricks, including:

• Updating Facebook using sites like hellotxt and Ping.fm

• Downloading Facebook Photo Albums using FacePAD: Facebook Photo Album Downloader

• Scheduling your Facebook messages using Sendible

• Synchronizingphotos of your Facebook friends with your MS Outlook contacts

• Deleting, Canceling and Terminating your  Facebook Account and Profile

For the full list of tips and tricks, click here.

This week's tech tips and news

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Welcome to Monday, all!  Here's this week's roundup of interesting tech tips and news, enjoy!

TIPS

• MS Office
  • Creating watermarks 
  • Add a bookmark to your document

• File Management
  • Print Files on Your Printer from Any Phone or Remote Computer via Dropbox  - PC's  or Macs
  • How to Open Compressed Files on Your iOS Device
  • How to Play Any Media File in iTunes

• As of Monday, Ocotber 4th, check the apps you download on your mobile phone  for TRUSTe certification to ensure that your private information is protected - A Badge That Tells Consumers, 'Trust This App'
• Keeping Your Twitter Account Active and Secure
• How to Show More Sites On the Internet Explorer 9 New Tab Page 
• Five Best Presentation Creation Tools
• How to Encode Video for All Your Mobile Devices
• Why You Should Use Ad Block Extensions, Even if You Don't Block Ads
• To Remain Productive: Assign Email a 15-Minute Minimum to Avoid Unnecessary Checking
• 5 ways to cut your storage footprint

 

NEWS

• Tablet computers on the horizon -  Dell (Streak), BlackBerry (PlayBook) , Sharp Galapagos,  Kno and Amazon?!
• Google
  • In Schmidt's vision, Google will anticipate users' searches before they even ask
  • Google URL Shortener, aka Goo.gl, Finally Gets Its Own Web Site
  • Google Docs Emulates Microsoft Word's "Track Changes" Feature
• Social Media
  • Tracking the flu by tracking the tweets 
  • Bazaarvoice Ramps Up For Social Shopping
  • Facebook upgrades photos -- look out, Flickr
  • Facebook offers peek at incoming malware attacks
• Microsoft boosts Hotmail security, limits account hijacking
• HP to generate ad revenue from printing reformatted web pages
   

Keeping your electronics clean

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You've spent your good money on your electronics so you want to keep them clean and looking good, but how?  Well, according to Good Housekeeping, no harsh cleansers are necessary - a microfiber cloth and a bit of water or rubbing alcohol does the trick in most cases.  Check out their full list of tips for cleaning most electronics such as keyboards, LCD monitors, cell phones, stereos and more.  For quick cleaning, you can always use wipes specially made for cleaning electronics.